Doug Heffernan
Member
Any time EA shows a vague "making of" video during their conference instead of an actual trailer, I'm just going to assume the game is a mess.
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Jason Schreier: Visceral's game was not canned because it was single-player
- Thread starter mdubs
- Start date
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
They used very specific terminology, it wasn't the fact that it was singleplayer but seemed based on the type of single player game. One that contradicts design trends this gen. When I think on Uncharted's older trends. I think about how the games used to be so scripted that even if nothing hurt you you'd still die if you went off script too much. Compared to stuff like that level open world level in Lost Legacy or Madagascar in UC4 let alone stuff like the suburban exploration in TLOU.
DeviantBoi
Member
Wait... so the Visceral Star Wars game was cancelled after all?
Yearsoflurking
Member
Between visceral news and masseffect news EA has had a very bad year.
Ninja Scooter
Member
This makes the most sense. I know SP games aren't as in vogue right now, but a SP big budget Star Wars game would probably still do big business. I have a hard time believing a game that was green lit as a SP Star Wars game and in development for 3-4 years as a SP Star Wars game would suddenly be cancelled for being a SP Star Wars game unless something else was going on.
Yeah I know that feeling, of being called or implied to be a corporate shill when I simply disagree with loot box gambling alarmists in their overemotional assessments, lol.
I have a feeling if the loot box gold rush actually becomes too much for consumers the market will correct itself accordingly. All gaming fads eventually go to the wayside in favor of the next most acceptable thing. And if it doesn't...well, there's always gardening as a hobby.
KawabataSan
Member
but i see people saying single player games are not dead anymore because of this news
but it seems ea is still moving to gaas
this guy gets it
You're thinking of Motive. The game got moved to EA Vancouver, which is on the other side of Canada, and is under the purview of Black Box's lead.
Yes. I feel this is why we are actually having this discussion. Like, assuredly the game was in a bad state, and that was the #1 reason for cancellation, but EA is unlikely to go with a singleplayer heavy game unless it's at least a full campaign coop open world title.
This is similarly following up Bethesda's games underperforming and Bethesda making heavy direction shifts there as well.
Going further back, we need look no further than Ubisoft's E3 showing to see a company that used to be nigh entirely in on singleplayer focused experiences going with a very multiplayer heavy/centric approach.
shortsoptional
Member
It's being changed in to a game with a broader appeal.
Yeah. It doesn't change the conversation from yesterday.
The issue with EA and their SP games is that they seem to allow the budgets balloon out of control and get stuck in development for far too long now. AAA games are expensive, but having 4+ years of development time and a budget well over $100mil by launch meant the game might be labeled as a failure if it under performed at retail. That Dead Space thread should remind everyone that EA tends to make some pretty poor decisions with their games.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that they decided to pivot a title that still had 2 years of production time left and might not have a long term way to monetize the game post release. Add in the production woes the game currently had and EA was willing to cut and run. I expect to see them do it more often if they continue to allow these long production cycles and decide part way though development that the game won't fit into the current game market.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that they decided to pivot a title that still had 2 years of production time left and might not have a long term way to monetize the game post release. Add in the production woes the game currently had and EA was willing to cut and run. I expect to see them do it more often if they continue to allow these long production cycles and decide part way though development that the game won't fit into the current game market.
Callibretto
Member
I hear when you've been on something long enough, you lose objectivity and everything is magnified. sometimes thing like small tiny flaw get magnified because you've seen it so long, you think it's a disaster.
other time, you get used to seeing the mistakes and you start thinking that there's nothing wrong with it. Uncharted 3 aiming problem is probably an example of this. ND got used to play testing their games like that, they got used to it totally didn't notice that the aiming is not as good as Uncharted 2.
I don't think this happen only in video games industry either.
Well that's a dumb thing to think.
schaft0620
Member
While EA did not explicitly say that it was being canceled because it was single player, they said the game was being canceled for qualities that single player games have.
I am going to stick with what EA said themselves. Publishers come out all the time and say that games get canceled because they run over budget or miss milestones.
I am going to stick with what EA said themselves. Publishers come out all the time and say that games get canceled because they run over budget or miss milestones.
Doug Heffernan
Member
To be fair, the last time Assassin's Creed had competitive multiplayer was Black Flag. I'll give them credit for sticking with single player for their flagship franchise.
They want to have their cake and eat it too. It's not really shocking behavior for a company like EA.
The quote from EA was basically that:
- the engine will switch to frostbite.
- the assets will be taken for the new developer to use. (although it's very unclear how easily you can move high quality assets/animations between frameworks).
- they will seek to create a 'broader' game (taken to be more open-world, less linear).
But, from EA's point of view, I suspect the debt is just written off. It would be grossly unfair to pressure the new developer to recoup the costs incurred by the cancelled project.
It's possible that the cost of rag-tag is less of a problem than the lost time on the star-wars exclusivity deal. I think they're approaching the half-way point... and I'm not sure they have all that much to show for it yet.
The truth is probably somewhere between - that the project was in trouble, but the financing made it a bit harder to justify continuing with development. They didn't write off $xm for nothing.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Oh yea definitely misread that. :/
FlutterPuffs
Member
Single player is dead is the new PC gaming is dead.
I do think it's really notable though that the reason that happened is because they moved the Assassin's Creed multiplayer team on to Steep and the Assassin's Creed naval team onto Skull & Bones (which is also why they cut the naval sections from the game).
The game losing its light multiplayer component and a major campaign feature in favor of spinning up two service games is still moving in the direction of online service games in my mind, though I could see the argument otherwise.
I'm also guessing EA would have given more leash for a game that checked the right boxes as well. It's why they mentioned stuff about changing the design in the "scaling down" statement.
The game could have been a mess that ended up being a good game. Any game could be considered a mess if it takes long enough to come out.
EA's direction as a company is clear based off all their previous statements.
The criticism many have of this direction as non-business people is still applicable and part of the entire conversation.
The game could have been a mess that ended up being a good game. Any game could be considered a mess if it takes long enough to come out.
EA's direction as a company is clear based off all their previous statements.
The criticism many have of this direction as non-business people is still applicable and part of the entire conversation.
shortsoptional
Member
That's what's weird to me.
They cancel (reboot, ect) the original game and ALREADY have a new direction for the game? Like, they didn't sit down, take some time and decide what to do after they've canceled it...
They don't even know what they are going to do with Amy, but they know what they are doing with the game it seems.......
Often times to induce independent studios into unwanted mergers.
You know they may not have a full plan but want to give the appearance that it's all hands on deck, right? This is the basis of all PR: reframing a narrative that would otherwise make the company look bad.
The game almost assuredly got a warning that they had to get back on track around 3-6 months ago, and they presumably made a contingency plan for the game in the event the review failed.
A lot of people involved have said that the writing was on the wall for months, and the studio had already declined to 70 people without layoffs, so I'm guessing everyone knew this might happen and many had already started to move on.
Could just be a way of signaling the investors that all the work that went into this wasn't completely useless. Re-using assets and all that for a GaaS instead. That said, it should take a looooong time before we see this game again.
Papacheeks
Banned
So another Mismanaged project and studio like what happened to Mass effect:Andromeda.
Get your shit together EA.
Get your shit together EA.
JigglesBunny
Banned
What Jason is saying in no way contradicts the very real possibility that this game will resurface as a MP focused GaaS title.
All those meltdowns and assumptions about the game being turned into a MP focused GAAS tho.....
I actually think itd be naive to think otherwise given everything we know at this point.
I imagine that statement is much more focused on their investors than Disney.
Disney mostly spends their time cancelling their own Star Wars games from the two console titles to mobile titles and PC online games, so I'm sure they're familiar with the issues development can run into.
Disney won't care unless the games start to negatively impact their other Star Wars properties.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Just some clarification, Ubisoft Singapore still handles all the water simulation in the AC games. AC:O has naval combat as a callback to Black Flag too. And Steep was the result of them testing out new tech for Ghost Recon. But yes Ubi is all about service games atm.
MiamiWesker
Member
And it doesn't change the fact that EA let out a statement basically shitting on and condemning linear single player experiences as if they are disgusting things that must never be allowed to be created.
I cannot see how you release a statement like that and then release the game as the exact thing you said had to change. If this game ends up as a linear single player action game I would be surprised.
I cannot see how you release a statement like that and then release the game as the exact thing you said had to change. If this game ends up as a linear single player action game I would be surprised.
If you think the games are going to influence the success of the movies you are kidding yourself.
stan423321
Member
Hmm. I felt that Schreier has already pretty much told us that in plaintext. I guess this was that one rare case where it was everyone else who didn't drag out "the obvious implications" and me who did.
There's absolutely no way to tell and you shouldn't speculate in that direction at all.
Pie and Beans
Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
My hottake from another thread: I think Hennig did the same thing with this Star Wars game that she did with Uncharted 4: too many gimmicks and trying to re-invent the wheel with ultimately nothing coming together in the end and a lack of strong directing.
A straight Nathan Drake but with a laser blaster game would have been a slam dunk, but you start introducing light-whips and other shit and you lose focus (Ballroom Dancing Mechanic was one thing Uncharted 4 was going to have for instance). That light whip grappling and whatever else still looking dodgy 4 years into dev and it might've just been time to kill it. Especially if Respawn and the other teams stuff is just looking way better in shorter spaces of time.
Same thing with Uncharted 2 being a "broken mess" just before going gold. No surprise one of those guys has essentially retired for now.
A straight Nathan Drake but with a laser blaster game would have been a slam dunk, but you start introducing light-whips and other shit and you lose focus (Ballroom Dancing Mechanic was one thing Uncharted 4 was going to have for instance). That light whip grappling and whatever else still looking dodgy 4 years into dev and it might've just been time to kill it. Especially if Respawn and the other teams stuff is just looking way better in shorter spaces of time.
Same thing with Uncharted 2 being a "broken mess" just before going gold. No surprise one of those guys has essentially retired for now.
Absoludacrous
Member
Yea, people were asking a lot of questions about this game around E3, and the only explanations for it's lack of presence were either that the game was a mess, or they didn't want to take the spotlight off Battlefront 2.
It makes sense they would give them until BF2's release window to pull it together, because after that they would need to start showing it.
These video games are not made by one person.
InsaneTiger
Member
I was thinking something similar, the project being only a mess doesn't preclude it from having it being turned into something more inline with EA current taste for service driven games.
shortsoptional
Member
I'm just still curious what Amy's been doing this whole time then? If they knew then surely she did too...and they are still talking about what her "direction" is going to be. Maybe a better thing would have been not to say anything at all about what the new game will be....only that it wasn't completely scrapped. Using their vague terminology about what they intend to do with it after describing the earlier version as "linear" opens them up to speculation.
And that's fine, that may all be true and a lot of this could be PR in some ways. I just think what they said and how they said it seems weird. Hopefully Jason will grace us with the full story in his next book.
This. They probably took a long hard look at their in process games and wanted to see the state of progress.
Mushroomer25
Member
Waypoint also ran an editorial that focused on this as the sign of single-player games being less feasible for big studios.
And for the record, none of the points made in either article are really wrong. They were just running on the assumption that EA was being 100% honest with investors on why Visceral's project got cancelled. It also seems highly likely that the game that comes of this will be something more open, and more focused on long-term engagement over a finite campaign.
If EA really believed in the concept of a liner Star Wars campaign, they would have simply said Visceral's project needed major retooling. None of the gibberish about 'market forces' or making a game players 'need to return to'.
ItWasMeantToBe19
Banned
Mass Effect Andromeda failed because the studio spent three years trying to make a randomly generated, story driven, single player RPG and it turned out that a game like that would suck. Then they only had like 18 months to make the game that it became.
Not sure the Star Wars game's failure was too comparable.